Under the Egg

by Laura Marx Fitzgerald

I smiled. “Actually, you just gave me an idea. Wanna come?”

  “I guess. Is it really far away? It’s brutal out there.”

  I wrapped a drop cloth around the painting like a present and looked around for something to carry it in.

  “I think you’ll like it. It’s pretty cool.”

  • • •

  “I don’t know if I’d call this place ‘cool.’” Bodhi looked suspiciously around the church sanctuary. “Is someone going to come out and ask me if I love Jesus?”

  “You’ve got to admit it’s a lot cooler than my house.” And I was right. Stepping into Grace Church was like leaving summer outside and landing in the middle of October. Dark and easily twenty degrees cooler than the street, I was tempted to take off my shoes and chill my bare feet on the marble floor, but thought that might be considered sacrilegious. Or something.

  Bodhi was unfazed by such concerns and sprawled out on a pew. “So why are we here? Are you going to confess?”

  “No. At least, I don’t think so.” To be honest, I wasn’t sure how this how church thing worked. Always on the lookout for free cultural events, Jack and I had sometimes attended Grace Church’s organ concerts, but I’d never entered the building for any spiritual purpose.

  As a family, the Tenpennys had been members of Grace Church since 1853—until Jack came along with his committed brand of atheism. Over the years, he’d devised his own worship schedule: Sunday mornings sketching at one of the city’s museums, Christmas reading Sartre before the fire, Easter morning working in the garden. I’d followed his lead and never had much need for any church—until now.

  But I’d read enough history books to know that priests read Latin. And I’d read enough mystery novels to know that they have to keep whatever you tell them secret.

  Just as I was wondering how to summon a priest when you need one, a plump lady in full clerical garb entered the sanctuary from a small door by the altar. She stopped and gave a small bow to the altar, then turned and walked toward the back of the church, her Birkenstocks squeaking up the aisle.

  “Hullo there,” came a British voice from halfway up the aisle. “May I help you ladies?”

  “Um, yes. We’re looking for a priest, I guess?”

  She came to a stop in front of us and chuckled. “Well, you found one, I guess. Reverend Cecily, you can call me.” She shook my hand firmly. “And you are?”

  “I’m Theo. Theodora, really. But you can call me Theo.”

  “Theo-Theodora, welcome.” She held my hand in hers warmly. “We are truly happy to have you here.”

  “Uh, okay, thanks.” I withdrew my hand and wondered if Bodhi was right and Reverend Cecily was going to ask if I loved Jesus. “And this is my friend, Bodhi.” As soon as I used the word, “friend,” I wished I could take it back. But if Bodhi minded, she didn’t show it. She just stayed where she was on the pew and gave a little wave.

  “Hello there. What a wonderful name, Bodhi. The Sanskrit word for ‘enlightenment.’ Your parents are Buddhists?”

  Bodhi propped herself up on her elbows. “They were when I was born. Or at least their guru was.”

  “Ah. Well, what can I do for you girls today?” Her eyes dropped to the 1970s blue hardside Samsonite I’d found in the attic, where the painting was zipped neatly into one side.

  I moved the suitcase behind my legs. “We’re looking for a priest to read some Latin. But you’re a . . . I didn’t know women—”

  “—could be priests? This is an Episcopal church, and indeed they can. And yes, I read Latin. Ancient Greek, too. I studied them for my divinity degree.” Reverend Cecily looked confused. “Do you need homework help?”

  “Not exactly.”

  • • •

  Reverend Cecily set to work with the painting in her study and sent Bodhi and me to the kitchen to raid the coffee-hour cookies.

  “How did you know those words were Latin?” Bodhi asked, her mouth full of Social Tea Biscuits. “Do you take it in school?”

  “No, Spanish.” I shoved another Nutter Butter in my mouth and slipped three more into the patchwork pockets I’d sewn onto Jack’s old T-shirt. “What language do you take?”

  “I don’t take anything. I’m unschooled.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s kind of like homeschooling but without the school part.”

  “So . . . it’s just . . . being home?”

  Bodhi huffed. “No, it’s pursuing your own interests, when you want to. Independent study projects, they’re called. Like, when my mom was on location in Tanzania, I worked at an animal rescue center, working with baby hippopotamuses. And when my dad did that movie about the inner-city teacher, I wrote a history of hip-hop. And the summer they did that disaster movie together, I pretty much just read all the Tolkein books.”

  “Oh.”

  “Whatever. I’m going to school in the city this fall.” Bodhi took a swig of apple juice from a paper cup. “Besides, it’s not homeschooling when you don’t have a home.”

  “So where did you live before?”

  “On sets. On location. In trailers. In hotel rooms. At other actors’ houses. Oh, and one year at a Collective Living Experience.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Just a bunch of hippies arguing about whose turn it is to do the dishes.”

  Another cookie in the mouth, another in the pocket. “What about friends?”

  Bodhi shrugged. “What about them?”

  “Well, how did you make them? Or keep them?” This wasn’t just a hypothetical question. I was looking to her for ideas, like a seminar in one of those free flyers around Manhattan: Making and Keeping Friends When You Have Nothing in Common with Your Peers (and Dress Weird).

  “Eh, didn’t need ’em. I had my mom. I had my dad. Not usually both at the same time. But, y’know, I had the world. Tanzania! New Zealand! Hollywood movie sets of Tanzania and New Zealand!”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “And there were always people around. Tutors, nannies, assistants, assistants to the assistants. There was always someone to take me where I wanted to go.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The room was filled with the sound of munching cookies.

  “But not always someone to go with.” Bodhi met my eyes again and seemed to search out something there. “Do you know what I mean?”

  I knew exactly what she meant. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

  “Ah, there you are, ladies.” Reverend Cecily appeared at the door. “Let me fix a cup of tea, and then come to my office. I think I may have solved your mystery.”

  • • •

  When we got to Reverend Cecily’s office, I saw that the painting was propped on the chair across from the reverend’s desk, as if she was offering it counseling.

  “Well, a nifty little piece your grandfather picked up here. Where did he get it?”

  Reverend Cecily’s stream of chatter rescued me from answering. “Now, I don’t know much about painting—styles, artists, that sort of thing—but religious iconography I know.”

  Bodhi perched herself on the corner of Reverend Cecily’s desk. “Ico-whattery?”

  “It’s the symbols,” I jumped in. “What they mean, what they’re trying to say, sort of like a visual code. Like . . . a skull means mortality. Or a dog means fidelity.”

  “Or a mirror means vanity. Exactly!” Reverend Cecily clapped her hands again. “You are quite the art scholar.”

  “My grandfather was a painter.”

  “He taught you well, I see. Okay, we have ourselves a Madonna and Child, Mary and Jesus, that much you already know. My guess would be Renaissance in style, but to be fair, that’s not very realistic. One doesn’t find Leonardos rattling around the attic, despite what Antiques Roadshow might suggest!” She laughed at her own little joke. “No, I would guess some ninetee
nth-century painting in the Renaissance style.”

  “So what does the poem say?” asked Bodhi.

  Reverend Cecily picked up a yellow legal pad. “Now, my background is more church Latin—not poetry—but here we go:

  Bread of life

  Risen yet unrisen

  Nourished the well-fed

  And healed the healing angel

  “Ummmm, okay. So what does that mean?” interjected Bodhi. I looked over and was surprised to see that Bodhi was staring at the painting intently.

  “Well, to be fair, it sounds better in Latin.” Reverend Cecily folded her hands over her robes. “But it’s basic Christian imagery, really,” she started. “In John 6:35, after the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes, Jesus says, ‘I am the—’”

  “‘The bread of life,’” I finished, surprising myself. I guess something had sunk in during all those organ concerts.

  “Yes! ‘He who comes to me will never go hungry.’ Spiritual hunger, you understand? Here, he foreshadows the Last Supper. You know the da Vinci painting, of course.”

  Even Bodhi nodded.

  “This is where Christ shared bread and wine with his disciples, asking them to do this again in remembrance of Him after his death. That moment is repeated every week at Mass in what we call Communion. So in calling the Christ Child ‘the bread of life,’ the painter is alluding to Christ’s future sacrifice and to Communion.”

  “So why is the bread risen but not risen?” I asked.

  “It’s a—well, not exactly a joke—but a play on words. The Last Supper takes place during Passover, the Jewish festival in which they eat unleavened bread—that is, bread made without any yeast to make it rise. And this painting foreshadows Christ’s death, when his life is cut short, but after which he ascends—or rises—into heaven. ‘Risen but not risen.’ Do you see?”

  “And the well nourished? And the healing angel?”

  “This one’s a bit trickier.” Reverend Cecily thought for a moment. “Christ came to offer love to one and all: the rich and the poor, the high and the low. So in this way, He ‘nourished the well nourished’: his spiritual food fills those who have material wealth but no inner peace. And because He holds dominion over all of heaven and earth, He can comfort even the angels who comfort us.”

  Reverend Cecily crouched down to inspect the faces further. “While this is nominally a traditional Madonna with the infant Christ Child, I think the painting is really foreshadowing the Last Supper and the end of Christ’s life. This isn’t the robust toddler you usually see in paintings like these. This Christ Child looks drawn, almost ill, as if He is already filled with suffering. And Mary looks on with such worry, poor dear.” The rector clucked her tongue.

  “And see this bird? That’s the dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit. See how he descends upon the Mother and Child? That’s foreshadowing Christ’s baptism, when the Holy Spirit descends from heaven. That’s the moment when Christ begins his mission and starts down the path that leads inevitably to his crucifixion.”

  We all looked closer. You couldn’t escape it—the painting was a downer.

  “It’s a complex painting. Interesting, I think, in the way it imbues a Madonna and Child composition—usually a sweet, peaceful subject—with quite dark undertones.”

  “So is it worth anything?” Bodhi blurted out.

  Reverend Cecily laughed. “That is certainly outside my expertise. But since you’re so keen to find out, I know someone who could give you an appraisal. A parishioner of mine works at one of the auction houses uptown. If you bring him the painting, I’m sure he’ll be able to ID it in a jiffy.” She jotted a name and number down on a slip of paper and handed it to me.

  “Thanks, Reverend Cecily. I really appreciate this.” I started wrapping up the painting again and settling it back into the Samsonite.

  “Not a problem.” She glanced at my pockets bulging with Nutter Butters, then she picked up a flyer from her desk and held it out to me. “You know, our church hosts a food pantry, open Tuesday and Thursday mornings. You’re welcome to come along anytime.”

  “Oh. Yeah, thanks. Thanks about the painting.” I turned toward the door and left the flyer in her outstretched hand. Jack always said that as long as we had eggs in the henhouse, we didn’t need charity.

  “Theo, there is one other thing.”

  “Yes?”

  Reverend Cecily hesitated a moment. “It’s the ‘healing angel’ in those verses; I keep coming back to it. Another translation might be ‘the angel that heals.’” She walked back over to her desk and opened a large Bible, paging through it until she found what she was looking for. “Here. In the Book of Enoch, we find the archangel Raphael, whose name means ‘God heals.’ This angel Raphael cures Tobiah’s blindness and brings him safely into the light at the end of his journey.”

  “Oh?” I waited. “Really?”

  Reverend Cecily looked amused. “Why, Theo-Theodora. What would your grandfather say? Doesn’t the name Raphael ring a bell?” She laughed at my blank stare. “Raphael the painter? One of the giants of the Italian Renaissance—of painting, full stop?”

  Click.

  Chapter Five

  Raphael. Of course.

  In my defense, I’d like to point out that I spent most of that summer in a heat-addled stupor. Also, I suspect that a beet-heavy diet may have deprived my brain of the nutrients needed to recall major artists.

  Or maybe I’d been so close to the answer I couldn’t see it, the way your name looks like a random jumble of letters if you stare at it too long. Jack loved Raphael and had dragged me to see his work whenever he could: at the Met, of course; on tour at the Frick; even the collection at the National Gallery in D.C., which we’d visited in one day via a round-trip Chinatown bus.

  Now a missing part of that collection might be tucked into in my Samsonite, and as Bodhi and I exited through the church’s leafy garden courtyard, my brain rapidly sorted through the Raphaels I’d seen, holding them up for comparison.

  Bodhi, meanwhile, was halfway down the Information Highway.

  “Do you know how much the last Raphael painting went for at auction?” Bodhi practically shouted, staring into her phone.

  “Shhhhhh!” I hissed, switching the suitcase from one sweaty hand to the other.

  “Thirty-seven million dollars!”

  I tripped, almost sending thirty-seven million dollars into a flower bed.

  “Hey!” Bodhi dove for the suitcase and caught it just in time. “Careful. You don’t want to break your . . . wait . . . got it,” Bodhi jabbed and swiped furiously at her phone. “Raphael. Born Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, actually. Along with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, one of the Big Three of the Italian Renaissance.”

  “The three of them pretty much were the Renaissance,” I launched in. Bodhi might have known movies, music, and hippopotamuses. But I knew art. “Raphael in particular was revered by every future generation of painters, even modernists like Jack.”

  Bodhi was too focused on her Wikipedia page to hear me. “Born in 1483, father was court painter to a very powerful duke. He grew up among the elite, and this gave him access to wealthy and powerful patrons when he came of age. Orphaned at eleven and apprenticed out early to famous painters like Perugino.” Now she looked up at me. “Know him?”

  “Perugino? Sure, the Met has a few of his paintings. Lovely modeling, a real sense of—”

  “Raphael moved on to Florence, then on to Rome, where he became the favorite painter of two popes and the Italian aristocracy. Mostly famous for his monumental works across an entire room at the Vatican called the Raphael Rooms, including a painting called—

  “School of Athens,” I cut in. “His masterpiece, the high point of Humanism, bringing the giants of Classical Greece and Rome into the heart of the Catholic Church.”

  “Hey, let me get there.�
� Bodhi jumped ahead a few screens. “But Raphael was perhaps best known for—”

  My stomach gave a flip. “—his Madonna and Child paintings.”

  Bodhi glared at me.

  “Sorry.”

  If there was one thing Raphael was famous for, it was his cuddly Jesuses and adoring Madonnas: seated, standing, alone, with other characters from the Bible. But always lovely and lovable.

  Kind of like the one in the very suitcase, now giving me a shoulder cramp.

  Kind of. But not exactly.

  “Oh, I know these guys.” Bodhi was holding up her phone to show me two mischievous angels gazing upward. You’d know them if you saw them, too, a detail from a larger work that has been isolated and reproduced on calendars and greeting cards and chocolate boxes around the world. “So I guess this painting is a big deal, right?”

  I took a deep breath. “Listen, we don’t know what this is. Like the reverend said, it’s probably much later than Raphael. It could be some junky old thing my grandfather found in a pawnshop. It could be some old family heirloom he found down in the cellar and—”

  “Then why did he hide it, huh? Explain that!”

  I couldn’t.

  “All right, let’s say it is a Raphael. That means it’s probably,” I looked around, “stolen. And if it’s stolen, no one is giving me thirty-seven anything, except maybe thirty-seven years in the slammer.”

  We were back on Broadway and stopped to enjoy the air-conditioning leaking out of a nail salon’s doors.

  “So what, we drop it in front of the next cop car we see and run?” Bodhi looked disappointed. “This was just starting to get good.”

  I set the suitcase down and perched myself on top. “Okay, let’s think. We have an artist and time period in mind. We’ve translated the message. What do we need to figure out next?”

  Bodhi started counting off on her fingers. “Is it really a Raphael? If not, what is it? Where’d your granddad get it? Why’d he hide it? Why—”

  “No, I said next. What do we need to know next? Because if it’s stolen, we have to turn it in. But if it’s just some old painting—well, I could use the money, whatever it’s worth. Like, now.”